How To Read Email Headers And Find Internet Hosts
''Pat Infimate"
//rrlf.sk
Description:-
This article is written for educational purpose.
Process:-
Now some of you may think that headers are too simple or boring to waste time on. However, a few weeks ago
I asked the 3000+ readers of the Happy Hacker list if anyone could tell me exactly what email tricks I was playing in the
process of mailing out the Digests. But not one person replied with a complete answer -- or even 75% of the answer -- or even
suspected that for months almost all Happy Hacker mailings have doubled as protests. The targets: ISPs offering download sites
for email bomber programs.
Conclusion: it is time to talk headers!
In this Guide we will learn:
· what is an email header
· why email headers are fun
· how to see full email headers
· what all that stuff
in your email headers means
· how to get the names of Internet host computers from your email headers
· the foundation
for understanding the forging of email and Usenet posts, catching the people who forge headers, and the theory behind those
email bomber programs that can bring an entire Internet Service Provider (ISP) to its knees
This is a Guide you can make at least some use of without getting a shell account or installing some form of Unix
on your home computer. All you need is to be able to send and receive email, and you are in business. However, if you do have
a shell account, you can do much more with deciphering headers. Viva Unix!
Headers may sound like a boring topic. Heck, the Eudora email program named the button you click to read full headers
"blah blah blah." But all those guys who tell you headers are boring are either ignorant -- or else afraid you'll open a wonderful
chest full of hacker insights. Yes, every email header you check out has the potential to unearth a treasure hidden in some
back alley of the Internet.
Now headers may seem simple enough to be a topic for one of our Beginners' Series Guides. But when I went to look up
the topic of headers in my library of manuals, I was shocked to find that most of them don't even cover the topic. The two
I found that did cover headers said almost nothing about them. Even the relevant RFC 822 is pretty vague. If any of you super-vigilant
readers looking for flame bait happen to know of any literature that *does* cover headers in detail, please include that information
in your tirades!
*********************************************
Technical tip: Information relevant to headers may be extracted from
Requests for Comments (RFCs) 822 (best), as well as 1042, 1123, 1521 and
1891 (not a complete list). To read them, take
your Web browser to
http://altavista.digital.com and search for "RFC 822" etc.
*********************************************
Lacking much help from manuals, and finding that RFC 822 didn't answer all my questions, the main way I researched this
article was to send email back and forth among some of my accounts, trying out many variations in order to see what kinds
of headers they generated. Hey, that's how real hackers are supposed to figure out stuff when RTFM (read the fine manual)
or RTFRFC (read the fine RFC)doesn't tell us as much as we want to know. Right?
One last thing. People have pointed out to me that every time I put an email address or domain name in a Guide to (mostly)
Harmless Hacking, a zillion newbies launch botched hacking attacks against these. All email addresses and domain names below
have been fubarred.
************************************************
Newbie note: The verb "to fubar" means to obscure email addresses
and Internet host addresses by changing them. Ancient tradition holds that it is best to do so by substituting "foobar" or
"fubar" for part of the address.
************************************************
What are email headers?
If you are new to hacking, the headers you are used to seeing may be incomplete. Chances are that when you get email
it looks something like this:
But if you know the right command, suddenly, with this same email message, we are looking at tons and tons of stuff:
Hey, have you ever wondered why all that stuff is there and what it means? We'll return to this example later in this
tutorial. But first we must consider the burning question of the day:
Why are email headers fun?
Why bother with those "fucking" headers? They are boring, right? Wrong!
1) Ever hear a wannabe hacker complaining he or she doesn't have the addresses of any good computers to explore? Have
you ever used one of those IP scanner programs that find valid Internet Protocol addresses of Internet hosts for you? Well,
you can find gazillions of valid addresses without the crutch of one of these programs simply by reading the headers of emails.
2) Ever wonder who really mailed that "Make Money Fast" spam? Or who is that klutz who email bombed you? The first step
to learning how to spot email forgeries and spot the culprit is to be able to read headers.
3) Want to learn how to convincingly forge email? Do you aspire to write automatic spam or email bomber programs? (I
disapprove of spammer and email bomb programs, but let's be honest about the kinds of knowledge their creators must draw upon.)
The first step is to understand headers.
4) Want to attack someone's computer? Find out where best to attack from the headers of their email. I disapprove of
this use, too. But I'm dedicated to telling you the truth about hacking, so like it or not, here it is.
How can you see full email headers?
So you look at the headers of your email and it doesn't appear have any good stuff whatsoever. Want to see all the hidden
stuff? The way you do this depends on what email program you are using.
The most popular email program today is Eudora. To see full headers in Eudora, just click the "blah, blah, blah" button
on the far left end of the tool bar.
The Netscape web browser includes an email reader. To see full headers, click on Options, then click the "Show All Headers"
item.
Sorry, I haven't looked into how to do that with Internet Explorer. Oh, no, I can see the flames coming, how dare I not
learn the ins and outs of IE mail! But, seriously, IE is a dangerously insecure Web browser because it is actually a Windows
shell. So no matter how often Microsoft patches its security flaws, chances are you will be hurt by it one of these days.
Just say "no" to IE.
Another popular email program is Pegasus. Maybe there is an easy way to see full headers in Pegasus, but I haven't found
it. The hard way to see full headers in Pegasus -- or IE -- or any email program -- is to open your mail folders with Wordpad.
It is included in the Windows 95 operating system and is the best Windows editing program I have found for handling documents
with lots of embedded control characters and other oddities.
The Compuserve 3.01 email program automatically shows full headers. Bravo, Compuserve!
What does all that stuff in your email headers mean?
We'll start by taking a look at a mildly interesting full header. Then we'll examine two headers that reveal some interesting
shenanigans. Finally we will look at a forged header.
OK, let us return to that fairly ordinary full header we looked at above. We will decipher it piece by piece. First we
look at the simple version:
The information within any header consists of a series of fields separated from each other by a "newline" character.
Each field consists of two parts: a field name, which includes no spaces and is terminated by a colon; and the contents of
the field. In this case the only fields that show are "From:," "Date:," and "To:".
In every header there are two classes of fields: the "envelope," which contains only the sender and recipient fields;
and everything else, which is information specific to the handling of the message. In this case the only field that shows
which gives information on the handling of the message is the Date field.
When we expand to a full header, we are able to see all the fields of the header. We will now go through this information
line by line.
Received: by o200.fooway.net (950413.SGI.8.6.12/951211.SGI)for
techbr@fooway.net id OAA07210; Fri, 1 March 2002
This line tells us that I downloaded this email from the POP server at a computer named o200.fooway.net. This was done
on behalf of my account with email address of
techbr@fooway.net. The (950413.SGI.8.6.12/951211.SGI) part identifies the software name and version running that POP server.
********************************************
Newbie note: POP stands for Post Office Protocol. Your POP server is
the computer that holds your email until you want to read it. Usually your the email program on your home computer or shell
account computer will connect to port 110 on your POP server to get your email. A similar, but more general protocol is IMAP,
for Interactive Mail Access Protocol. Trust me, you will be a big hit at parties if you can hold forth on the differences
between POP and IMAP, you big hunk of a hacker, you! (Hint: for more info, RTFRFCs.)
********************************************
Now we examine the second line of the header:
Received: from ifi.foobar.no by o200.fooway.net via ESMTP
(950413.SGI.8.6.12/951211.SGI)for id OAA18967; Fri,
1
March 2002
Well, gee, I didn't promise that this header would be *totally* ordinary. This line tells us that a computer named ifi.foobar.no
passed this email to the POP server on o200.fooway.net for someone with the email address of
hacker@techbroker.com. This is because I am piping all email to
hacker@techbroker.com into the account
techbr@fooway.net. Under Unix this is done by setting up a file in your home directory named ".forward" with the address to which you want
your email sent. Now there is a lot more behind this, but I'm not telling you. Heh, heh. Can any of you evil geniuses out
there figure out the whole story?
"ESMTP" stands for "extended simple mail transfer protocol." The
"950413.SGI.8.6.12/951211.SGI" designates the program
that is handling my email.
Now for the next line in the header:
Received: from gyllir.ifi.foobar.no (
2234@gyllir.ifi.foobar.no[129.xxx.64.230]) by ifi.foobar.no with ESMTP (8.6.11/ifi2.4) id
for ; Fri, 1 March 2002
This line tells us that the computer ifi.foobar.no got this email message from the computer gyllir.ifi.foobar.no. These
two computers appear to be on the same LAN. In fact, note something interesting. The computer name gyllir.ifi.foobar.no has
a number after it, 129.xxx.64.230. This is the numerical representation of its name. (I substituted ".xxx." for three numbers
in order to fubar the IP address.) But the computer ifi.foobar.no didn't have a number after its name. How come?
Now if you are working with Windows 95 or a Mac you probably can't figure out this little mystery. But trust me, hacking
is all about noticing these little mysteries and probing them (until you find something to break, muhahaha -- only kidding,
OK?)
But since I am trying to be a real hacker, I go to my trusty Unix shell account and give the command:
>nslookup ifi.foobar.no
Server: Fubarino.com
Address: 198.6.71.10
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: ifi.foobar.no
Address: 129.xxx.64.2
Notice the different numerical IP addresses between ifi.foobar.no and gyllir.ifi.foobar.no. Hmmm, I begin to think that
the domain ifi.foobar.no may be a pretty big deal. Probing around with dig and traceroute leads me to discover lots more computers
in that domain. Probing with nslookup in the mode "set type=any" tells me yet more.
